“I am Ethiopian first” Abebe Gellaw

by Abebe Gellaw

Abebe Gellaw

It has come to my attention that my brief Facebook comment regarding a few controversial statements made by Jawar Mohammed has been posted on ECADF’s website as an article. I had no intention of writing a series piece on the issue. Quite obviously, there is a big difference between a well-thought out lengthy commentary and a brief message in a particular context.
My intention was just to appeal for calm and harmony, a necessary effort lacking in our political discourse. Often times, a message without its context is open to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. So there seems to be a need to clarify.
Politics, as far as I understand, is a mechanism of managing conflict of interests. It is a means of building consensus through dialogue and compromise. Since the early 1960s, the major political conflict in Ethiopia has been between ethno-nationalists and nationalists. The forces on both ends of the political spectrum have not still found a middle ground that can bring them towards consensus and compromise.
My understanding is that Jawar is an ethno-nationalist. As an ethno-nationalist, he says he is an Oromo first. Unlike him, I am a nationalist. But that is not the major problem. The problem is the way he has chosen to articulate and present his views in question that have been widely perceived as inflammatory and divisive.
I firmly and fervently believe that I am an Ethiopian first. I do not wish to allow the ethnic origin of my predecessors and parents to define me as a human being and overshadow my Ethiopian identity.
Jawar said Ethiopian identity was imposed on him. On the contrary, I argue that such a position is fundamentally flawed. Nowhere in the world is anyone given choices of national identity.
The Chinese-American writer, Eric Liu, once said: “The next time someone uses denial of citizenship as a weapon or brandishes the special status conferred upon him by the accident of birth, ask him this: What have you done lately to earn it?” Our predecessors, who have bequeathed us a country called Ethiopia with all its faults, challenges and problems, have made huge sacrifices in blood and flesh so that we’ll never be stateless. We should rather make sacrifices to reclaim our country and make our citizenship more meaningful by winning our rights, as citizens, to live in our country with full dignity, freedom and equality. We should make Ethiopia a country where every citizen and ethnic group is equal.
Unfortunately, our birthplaces also define the major problems and opportunities we inherit. Ethiopia is not a perfect nation. Far from it, it is defective and faulty as a result of the age-old tyrannies and injustices we have been condemned to suffer collectively.
Like any nation, it offers unique challenges as well as opportunities. With all its problems and baggage, Ethiopia is a nation of 80 million people. Our destiny is intertwined. We are diverse and yet we are all Ethiopians, whether we like it or not. I believe that rejecting Ethiopia as our country is not a solution to any of the problems we are supposed to confront. We should rather make strenuous efforts to reconstruct Ethiopia as a country where all of its citizens live in freedom, harmony, justice, peace and prosperity.
In the new Ethiopia we envision, there should be no room for inequality, injustice and tyranny. It should never be a prison for its children, regardless of their political, ethnic or cultural backgrounds. No ethnic or political group should be allowed to impose hegemony at the detriment of the majority.
The worst challenges all citizens of Ethiopia, except the oppressors, face are political oppression, grinding poverty, indignity, inequality, injustice and discrimination, just to mention a few among so many. At this time and age, what has been imposed on us is not national identity but the tyranny of the TPLF, an extremist ethno-nationalist group whose aim was nothing more than seceding Tigray. That is why we should continue struggling to throw off this backbreaking tyranny from our shoulders

Ethiopian migrants tell of torture and rape in Yemen

 

Eighty thousand Ethiopians risk their lives every year trying to get to Saudi Arabia and the promise of a better life. They are smuggled in boats across the Red Sea to Yemen and then must trek 500km (310 miles) to reach the Saudi border.
But it is a journey fraught with danger where thousands are tortured and sexually exploited by criminal gangs, as Yalda Hakim reports for BBC Newsnight.

Deconstructing Construction Corruption in Ethiopia

by Alemayehu G. Mariam
In my fifth commentary on corruption in Ethiopia this year, I focus on the construction sector. The other commentaries are available at my blogsite.
The cancer of corruption in the construction sector the World Bank (WB) documented in its “Diagnosing Corruption in Ethiopia” is just as malignant and metastatic as in the land, education and telecommunications sectors. According to the WB report:

In the construction sector, Ethiopia exhibits most of the classic warning signs of corruption risk, including instances of poor-quality construction, inflated unit output costs, and delays in implementation. In turn, these factors appear in some cases to be driven by unequal or unclear contractual relationships, poor enforcement of professional standards, high multipliers between public sector and private sector salaries, wide-ranging discretionary powers exercised by government, a lack of transparency, and a widespread perception of hidden barriers to market entry.

Ethiopia’s “construction sector” falls into four categories: roads, water supply and irrigation, power, and other public works including construction of universities, schools, hospitals and markets. Annual spending on roads alone is estimated to be US$1.2 billion. The “government” totally dominates the construction sector. “Ethiopia is unusual compared with most other African countries, which have already fully privatized the design and construction of public works.”
There are multiple and “interrelated drivers of corruption in Ethiopia’s construction sector.” These drivers are “related to deficiencies in accountability (transparency based on clear performance criteria), capacity (availability of sufficient material and human resources and proper procedures), and trust (confidence in the market that allows businesses to invest in increasing their own capacity). In Ethiopia, “A lack of capacity makes corruption possible, a lack of accountability makes corruption happen, and a lack of trust allows corruption to take root.”
The WB report highlights corruption in Ethiopia’s construction sector along six dimensions. The policymaking and regulatory processes are at high-risk area of corruption. Such corruption “has a major effect on sector governance.” Policies and regulations could “encourage, or help hide, corrupt practices” and unless corrected perpetuate corruption by groups or individuals. The Ethiopian “government” “controls the price of construction materials, access to finance, and access to equipment. It controls professional and company registrations. It maintains high-level, bilateral infrastructure deals with China and lacks independent performance audits.” According to the WB report, “Many stakeholders are concerned about the possibility of a connection between the dominant role of Chinese contractors in the road sector and high-level links between the Ethiopian and Chinese governments” and the “lack of effective competition, with Chinese contractors dominating the international market and a limited set of domestic contractors dominating the national market.” These problems are compounded by other factors such as poor quality control, weak enforcement of professional standards and overall lack of transparency. Professionals in the construction sector are reluctant to complain “for fear of being victimized” and believing there is no truly independent body to which they can appeal.” Since the “government is a major client”, “there is a reluctance to express dissent.”
The planning and budgeting (P&B) process is the second area of high corruption in Ethiopia’s construction sector.  When planning and budgeting “deviates from the use of a rational, objective basis for prioritizing the allocation of limited resources on the basis of need, anticipated rates of return, or other objective criteria,” it opens the floodgates of corruption. In Ethiopia, the P&B process is characterized by “lack of separation between policy making, budget allocation, and implementation functions” and “top-down planning by decree.” There are instances in which “projects that are not responding to a prioritized need and (when combined with weak procurement regulations) can sometimes be negotiated directly between a  corrupt official and a specific construction company.” Corruption also occurs in the form of “adoption of inappropriately high construction standards to enhance contract values, construction of new infrastructure while neglecting to maintain existing facilities, conflicts of interest for officials with a stake in the construction sector” and aiding “construction companies with party political allegiances.”
The third area of corruption is found in management and performance monitoring . According to the WB report, management weaknesses can lead to corruption in three main ways: “(a) Without basic good management controls, individuals (whether working for the client, the consultant, or the contractor) can find themselves free to take shortcuts that may cross the line into corruption. (b) Without good data management and reporting systems, the management information needed to identify and address corruption does not exist. (c) If the management is so incompetent that it gives rise to administrative or technical obstacles that are otherwise impossible to address, corrupt activities may be seen as the only realistic way for otherwise professionally minded individuals to deliver